Heart disease or heart failure is still the major cause of death in the Western world. One of the most common forms of heart disease is the formation of ischemic regions within the myocardium resulting from poor blood perfusion, either due to chronic coronary arterial disease or following acute myocardial infarction. Cells within ischemic zones undergo a gradual, generally irreversible, degeneration process eventually rendering them dead (see M. C. Fishbein, M. B. McLean et al., Experimental myocardial infarction in the rat, Am. J. Pathol. 90: 57-70, 1978). This process is expressed as a corresponding progressive deterioration of the viability of the ischemic zone.
Currently available approaches for treating coronary arterial disease symptoms include methods of restoring blood flow to a large localized segment of the epicardial coronary arterial tree (angioplasty) and bypassing the obstruction within the coronary arteries entirely, by performing a bypass graft.
Drug administration, for example, administration of cytoprotective compounds which prolong anaerobic cell viability, and laser myocardial revascularization, which improves blood supply to an affected myocardial region, are further therapeutic approaches (some still under testing) for treating ischemia.
It has been observed in some cases of myocardial ischemia that new, collateral blood vessels may grow in the heart to augment the supply of oxygen to the ischemic tissue. This phenomenon is known as angiogenesis. Recent advances in the understanding of mechanisms governing such angiogenesis, based on naturally-occurring substances known as growth factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF) and fibroblast growth factors (FGF), have added a novel possible form of therapy based on administration of exogenous angiogenic growth factors to the heart.
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the observed beneficial effect of growth factors on alleviating chronic and/or acute ischemia. These mechanisms include angiogenesis, increase in myocyte viability and resistance to injury, restoration of ischemia-impaired endothelium-dependent vasomotion, and recruitment of preexisting collateral vessels (see, J. A. Ware and M. Simons, Angiogenesis in ischemic heart disease, Nature Medicine, 3(2):158-164, 1997, which is incorporated herein by reference).
Harada et al. (Basic fibroblast growth factor improves myocardial function in chronically ischemic porcine hearts, J. Clin. Invest., 94:623-630, 1994, which is incorporated herein by reference) report that periadventitial administration of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) to pigs with gradual (artificially induced) coronary occlusion resulted in improvement of coronary flow and reduction in infarct size, as well as in prevention of pacing-induced hemodynamic deterioration. The growth factor was administered extraluminally to both occluded and neighboring arteries by applying a number of capsules holding beads containing bFGF and securing them to the artery. The beads were designed to slow-release their bFGF content at a predictable rate over a prolonged period of time, in order that the bFGF be effectively absorbed and transported to affected myocardial zones.
By comparison, intravenous administration of bFGF, including continuous systemic infusion, as opposed to periadventitial administration, was reported to exhibit only a minor angiogenic effect, mainly due to washout of the drug by the blood stream resulting in dilution, and a low retention time. (See E. R. Edelman et al., Perivascular and intravenous administration of basic fibroblast growth factor: Vascular and solid organ deposition, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 90:1513-1517, 1993; G. F. Whalen et al., The fate of intravenously administered bFGF and the effect of heparin, Growth Factors, 1:157-164, 1989; and E. F. Unger et al., A model to assess interventions to improve collateral blood flow: continuous administration of agents into the left coronary artery in dogs, Cardiovasc. Res., 27:785-791, 1993, which are incorporated herein by reference).
In a later paper (K. Harada et al., Vascular endothelial growth factor administration in chronic myocardial ischemia, Am. J. Physiol. 270 [Heart Circ. Physiol. 39]: H1791-H1802, 1996, which is incorporated herein by reference), the authors report similar beneficial angiogenic effects of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in pigs. The VEGF was administered by a microcatheter placed adjacent to an ameroid constrictor (i.e., an external ring of appropriate internal diameter, which is placed around the artery in order to induce a gradual occlusion thereof) and secured directly to the heart musculature distal to the constrictor. The microcatheter was connected to an osmotic pump (ALZyET, from Alza, Palo Alto, Calif.) placed inside the chest wall, outside the pericardial cavity.
An alternative approach for stimulating angiogenesis is gene therapy. Simons and Ware (Food for starving heart, Nature Medicine, 2(5):519-520, 1996, incorporated herein by reference) report still another growth factor, FGF-5, as having the capability of inducing myocardial angiogenesis in vivo when administered using a gene transfer delivery approach employing adenoviral vectors as transfer agents. Similarly, J. M. Isner (Angiogenesis for revascularization of ischaemic tissues, European Heart Journal, 18:1-2, 1997, incorporated herein by reference) reports treatment of critical limb ischemia by intra-arterial administration of "naked DNA" including the gene encoding vascular endothelial growth factor (phVEGF). The solution of plasmid DNA is applied to the hydrogel coating of an angioplasty balloon, which retains the DNA until the balloon is inflated at the site of gene transfer, whereupon the DNA is transferred to the arterial wall.
Accumulated results seem to indicate that the drug delivery approach of choice for growth factors ought to be a local, rather than a systemic (intravenous), delivery approach. The preferability of local delivery may stem from the low half-life of injected bFGF and its short retention time. Prolonged systemic intravenous delivery of bFGF has been reported to result in the development of significant hematological toxicity, which did not completely resolve even 4 weeks after treatment, as well as hypotensive effects. In addition, dilution effects associated with washout of the drug by the blood stream render the drug quantities required for such an approach prohibitively high. (See J. J. Lopez et al., Local perivascular administration of basic fibroblast growth factor: drug delivery and toxicological evaluation, Drug Metabolism and Disposition, 24(8):922-924, 1996; and J. J. Lopez and M. Simons, Local extravascular growth factor delivery in myocardial ischemia, Drug Delivery, 3:143-147, 1996, which are incorporated herein by reference.)
Local sustained delivery, on the other hand, is free of at least some of the above-mentioned drawbacks and is apparently more effective. The main drawback of the local delivery approach employing present available techniques, as cited above, is its extensively invasive nature. The methods described in the articles cited above involve open chest surgery. Despite apparent physiological and therapeutic advantages, there is no currently available technique for effective, locally-targeted, minimally invasive technique for intracardiac drug delivery, particularly a technique based on controlled-release administration.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,578,061, 4,588,395, 4,668,226, 4,871,356, 5,385,148 and 5,588,432, which are all incorporated herein by reference, describe catheters for fluid and solid-capsule drug delivery to internal organs of a patient, generally for use in conjunction with an endoscope. The catheters typically comprise a needle or a tube disposed at a distal end thereof, communicating with a fluid or solid dispenser via a duct. None of the disclosed catheters, however, comprise means for accurate position-controlled delivery of therapeutic drugs.